Portable electronic devices, such as portable media players, tablet, netbook, and laptop computers, cell, media, and smart phones, have become ubiquitous in recent years. These devices often include an audio jack through which they receive and provide audio information. The audio jacks may include, or be connected to, electronic circuits such as audio drivers for driving headphones or speakers, audio receivers for receiving audio signals from a microphone, and other circuits. These audio jacks may be arranged to receive an audio plug that may be connected to headphones, speakers, microphones, or other equipment.
These audio plugs may be electrical audio plugs. Audio jacks may include a number of ring-shaped contacts along their lengths. These contacts may connect to conductors in a cable attached to the audio plug. These contacts may include contacts for left audio, right audio, ground, and microphone. These audio plugs may also be optical audio plugs, that is, they may have an opening at an end to transmit or receive optical signals. In such a situation, the audio plug may be formed of plastic or other nonconductive material.
When an audio plug is inserted into an audio jack, it may be desirable that the audio plug remain in a fixed position. Since the audio plug may be connected to headphones or ear buds through a cord, forces may be exerted on the plug in a direction that could inadvertently remove the audio plug from the audio jack.
Also, some electronic devices employing audio jacks may achieve great commercial success. As such, millions of these audio jacks may need to be manufactured. Due to the magnitude of this task, any simplification in the assembly process is multiplied the millions of times the audio jacks are assembled. Accordingly, it may be desirable to provide an audio jack that is readily manufactured.
Thus, what is needed are circuits, methods, and apparatus that may provide audio jacks capable of providing a sufficient retention force to avoid at least some inadvertent extractions of an audio plug. It may also be desirable that these audio jacks be readily assembled.